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Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:results of a pilot study to examine feasibilityand promise
Cynthia S. Puranik1 • Melissa M. Patchan1 •
Christopher J. Lemons2 • Stephanie Al Otaiba3
Published online: 3 June 2016
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract Despite the poor outcomes for U.S. students on national writing tests,
overall research on how to teach writing is sparse, and this scarcity is more pro-
nounced in the early years of beginning to write. In this study 81,200 we present
preliminary findings from Year 1 of a 3-year Institute of Education Sciences-funded
Goal 2 project aimed at improving the writing performance of kindergarten chil-
dren. We designed peer assisted writing strategies (PAWS) and tested its feasibility
and promise. Participants for this study were 86 kindergartners ranging in age from
62 to 76 months, recruited from five classes in two different schools. It was feasible
for research staff to deliver PAWS, which combined the need to focus early writing
instruction on critical transcription skills with an effective learning pedagogy (i.e.,
peer-assisted learning). Lessons that targeted writing letters focused on formation
and fluency, and lessons that targeted spelling focused on teaching letter sound
correspondence for spelling decodable words and recognition and spelling practice
for sight words. Results indicated that there were statistically significant differences
between the PAWS participants and the control children on the alphabet fluency and
essay post-test measures. Thus preliminary results indicate that PAWS instruction
helped children, on average, improve early writing skills. Directions for future
research are discussed.
Keywords Early writing � Kindergarten � Literacy � Peer-assisted learning �Transcription � Writing instruction
& Cynthia S. Puranik
1 Georgia State University, 30 Pryor Street, Ste 850, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA
2 Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
3 Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA
123
Read Writ (2017) 30:25–50
DOI 10.1007/s11145-016-9661-9
Introduction
In the past three decades, educational efforts to improve literacy have concentrated
on improving our understanding of reading difficulties, the causes of these
difficulties, and how to assess and teach reading, especially in the primary grades.
This effort to prevent reading problems has materialized because educators and
policy makers are cognizant of the grim short and long term consequences related to
poor reading skills. Children who enter school with limited reading-related skills are
not only at a high risk for later reading difficulties but also for other academic
difficulties (Scarborough, 1998; Share, Jorm, MacLean, & Mathews, 1984) such as
increased referral for special education services and social and behavioral problems
(Lonigan et al., 1999; Spira, Bracken, & Fischel, 2005). Similar consequences have
been noted for writing. Children who are poor writers in first grade are highly likely
to remain poor writers at the end of fourth grade (Juel, 1988). Thus, as with reading,
future success in writing depends upon early educational experiences.
Reading, writing, and arithmetic (the three ‘‘Rs’’) have historically been
considered the cornerstone of our educational policy. Of the three ‘‘Rs’’, writing
is truly the neglected ‘‘R’’ (National Commission on Writing, 2003), so it is not
surprising that a majority of students in US schools do not write well enough to meet
grade-level expectations (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; Salahu-
Din, Persky, & Miller, 2008). Despite this poor performance, research on how to
teach writing is sparse, particularly for the early years of beginning to write. The
handful of empirical studies that have been conducted with kindergarten children
has focused on teaching spelling to improve reading skills (Ehri & Wilce, 1987;
O’Connor & Jenkins, 1995, Ouellette & Senechal, 2008; Vandervelden & Siegel,
1997). In all four of these studies, children in the experimental condition
outperformed the children in the control condition not only on spelling but also
on word reading. Whereas some research on teaching writing (beyond teaching
spelling) to beginning writers exists, they are primarily descriptive or based on
individual case studies (e.g., Behymer, 2003; Hall, 1987; Lysaker, Wheat, &
Benson, 2010).
Furthermore although writing researchers emphasize that beginning writers
should write every day for at least 30 min a day, in a recent study we observed
writing instruction and found that kindergarten students participated in writing for
an average of only 6.1 min of instruction in fall and only about 10 min in the winter
(Puranik, Al Otaiba, Folsom, & Greulich, 2014). Most of this time was independent
writing with little instruction (e.g., less than 2 min of spelling instruction was
observed). Perhaps not surprisingly, at the end of kindergarten, there was large
individual variability in the number of letters a student could write in a minute, the
number of words written, and the number of words spelled correctly. Across
classrooms, between 5 and 20 % of kindergarteners did not write any letters or
wrote only random strings in answer to a prompt that asked them about what they
had learned in kindergarten. This is problematic in light of increasing expectations
for beginning writers. Specifically, the Common Core State Standards for English
Language Arts & Literacy for kindergarten include: (a) print many upper- and
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lowercase letters, (b) write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel
sounds (phonemes), (c) spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of
sound-letter relationships, (d) produce and expand complete sentences in shared
language activities, and (e) use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to
write about experiences, stories, people, objects, or events.
The purpose of this study is to present preliminary findings of a pilot study of a
supplemental peer mediated writing instruction. This study is part of a 3-year IES
funded Goal 2 project. The purpose of a Goal 2 project is to demonstrate the
feasibility and the promise of an intervention that can later be evaluated through an
efficacy study with a tightly controlled experimental design. We followed principals
of design-based research studies (e.g., Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Bowen et al.,
2009; Dykstra Steinbrenner et al., 2015; Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011).
Ultimately the instruction will be tested with classroom teachers as end-users, but
initially we wanted to test the feasibility, usability, fidelity, and dosage in a more
controlled condition using project staff as implementers. To enhance usability, our
research staff included former teachers, former speech-language pathologists, and a
coauthor and a trainer of the K-PALS (Fuchs et al., 2001) curriculum. During this
small-scale underpowered quasi-experimental pre- post-test pilot, research staff
delivered PAWS in a small group pull-out fashion. In line with IES Goal 2 design
guidelines (IES, National Center for Education Research, 84-305A2012-2; 2011),
we focused our efforts in Year 1 on demonstrating the feasibility and promise for
improving writing performance of kindergarten children.
Peer assisted writing strategies (PAWS)
To guide the development of PAWS, not only did we consider the CCSS, but we
also used to two theoretical and empirical frameworks for beginning writing—one
focused on cognitive processes and the other connected with socio-cultural theory;
both have dominated much of the discussion about writing and writing develop-
ment. One theoretical view has focused on the individual writer and emphasizes the
importance of cognitive processes involved in writing, linguistic knowledge
required to produce written text, and affective and motivational factors in writing
(Flower & Hayes, 1981; Hayes, 1996; Hayes & Berninger, 2009). From a cognitive
perspective, in the early stages of writing, teaching transcription skills (transcription
refers to the actual mechanics of converting ideas into written symbols and includes
primarily spelling and handwriting) is critical. Thus, the ‘‘what’’ of our PAWs
instruction focused primarily on teaching transcription skills: handwriting and
spelling.
The focus on transcription skills is important because of empirical findings
showing that in the beginning stages of writing, transcription skills exact
considerable amounts of cognitive energy, interfering with other higher-order
writing processes required for writing. Research indicates that in the primary grades,
transcription skills of handwriting and spelling account for 66 % of the variance in
compositional fluency and 25 % of the variance in compositional quality (Graham,
1999). Most recently, Alves, Limpo, Fidalgo, Carvalhais, and Pereira (2015)
reported on a study in which they randomly assigned second graders to a
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 27
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handwriting condition and a keyboarding condition. Robust differences were noted
between the two groups; the students in the handwriting group outperformed the
students in the keyboarding group on handwriting fluency as expected but these
children also wrote longer and better stories than students in the keyboarding
condition. More importantly, they need to be fluent at various language levels: sub-
word, word, and sentence levels (Whitaker, Berninger, Johnston, & Swanson, 1994).
The importance of transcription skills has been noted as early as kindergarten.
Puranik and Al Otaiba (2012) found that even after controlling for important
demographic variables, kindergartners’ handwriting and spelling predicted their
performance on a writing prompt. Before children can compose text, they need to be
fluent in lower-order transcription skills.
The second theory that guided PAWS development has its roots in socio-cultural
theory (see Prior, 2006) and focuses on writing as a mode of social action that
allows a child to learn from interaction with a more knowledgeable other
(Vygotsky, 1978). In PAWS, the lessons always began with the teacher, ‘‘the
knowledgeable other’’ modeling the lessons and the feedback process. Socio-
cultural theories also concentrate on how writing development is influenced by the
social and contextual interactions that occur within the classroom and includes
interactions among students and interactions between students and teacher, which
led us to consider peer-assisted learning strategies as ‘‘how’’ we delivered the
intervention. In PAWS, all learning occurred during interactions among students
and teacher and between students acting as coaches and writers.
The primary empirical rationale for creating an intervention focused on peer
interaction is the strong evidence base supporting Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies
(PALS) developed by Fuchs, Fuchs, and colleagues (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2005; Fuchs,
Fuchs, Mathes, & Simmons, 1997; Fuchs et al., 2001a, b, c). PALS was primarily
based upon the foundational principles of Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT;
Delquadri, Greenwood, Whorton, Carta, & Hall, 1986): active engagement in
instruction, pairing children to work together on a highly structured sequence of
activities aimed at enhancing reading or mathematic skills. PALS has been shown to
be effective in improving student outcomes in reading and mathematics (Fuchs &
Fuchs, 2005; Fuchs, Fuchs, Kazdan, & Allen, 1999; Fuchs et al., 1997; Fuchs,
Fuchs, Thompson, Svenson, et al., 2001). Further, improvements have been
demonstrated across various ability levels of students (i.e., low, average, and high
readers), across differing types of schools (i.e., Title I, non-Title I), and across grade
level (i.e., kindergarten through high school). What is most important is that beyond
the demonstrated academic benefits, teachers and students report enjoying the
activities, teachers are able to implement the procedures with high fidelity, and the
intervention results in an increased social acceptance of students with disabilities
(Fuchs et al., 1997; Fuchs et al., 2001c; Mathes, Grek, Howard, Babyak, & Allen,
1999; Mathes, Howard, Allen, & Fuchs, 1998).
In addition to the documented evidence of PALS, there is evidence indicating
that children learn to write by imitating the actions of adults and by observing their
peers, that their attention is sustained and engagement increases when working with
peers, and that their motivation and enjoyment of writing increases when sharing
their written product with peers (Roberts & Wibbens, 2010; Trioia, Shankland, &
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123
Heintz, 2010). The power of peer involvement is seen as a teaching–learning
opportunity for all students involved; where students are viewed as participants in
the teaching and learning process (Graham & Perin, 2007; Rijlaarsdam et al., 2008).
One of the goals of PAWS was to extend the work of Fuchs, Fuchs, and colleagues
by developing a peer-assisted intervention that capitalizes on the strengths of CWPT
and PALS yet focuses on the underemphasized yet critical early writing skills of
kindergarten students.
The specific research aims were (1) to demonstrate the feasibility of
implementing the planned components with kindergarteners (i.e., fidelity, dosage,
and usability), (2) to determine whether the PAWS intervention would demonstrate
promise for increasing writing performance (i.e., alphabet fluency, spelling,
sentence-writing, and essay-writing) for kindergarten children when implemented
by research assistants in a pull-out small group format and (3) to determine whether
the PAWS intervention focused on writing would result in improvements in reading
for kindergarten children. Since students were taught writing during the language
arts instruction and missed out on the reading instruction taking place in the
classroom, we wanted to examine if this had any effect on their reading skills. Based
on prior research showing that teaching writing has positive effects on children’s
reading skills (see Graham & Hebert, 2010 for a review), we anticipated that
children in the PAWS group would perform just as well if not better than children in
the control condition. We anticipated that students receiving PAWS instruction
would outperform children in the control condition on post-test writing measures.
Method
Participants and setting
To address the specific research aims, we conducted a small-scale, pre- post-test
quasi-experiment. Participants for this study included 86 kindergartners ranging in
age from 62 to 76 months (M = 68.2, SD = 3.7) with 56 % of the children being
male. The majority of the participants were from minority ethnic backgrounds
(African American = 57 %, Caucasian = 33 %, Other = 6 %, Hispanic = 3 %,
Asian = 1 %). Participants were recruited from five classes in two different schools
(see Table 1 for demographic information).
School 1 was a low-SES, high performing (i.e., met the Adequate Yearly
Progress measures as reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for all
three of the preceding years) charter school that had two kindergarten classes with a
total of 40 students. Six children were randomly pulled from each class to receive
the PAWS instruction, while the remaining 28 children received typical writing
instruction (i.e., no core writing program; used Fountas & Pinnell’s Treasures
reading program). Several children missed at least one task during the assessment
periods, so their scores were not included in the corresponding analyses (see Table 1
for breakdown of attrition rates by task). In school 1, no data was missing from the
PAWS participants whereas the attrition rate for the control participants ranged
from 4 to 11 %.
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 29
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School 2 was a low-SES, low performing (i.e., did not meet the Adequate Yearly
Progress measures as reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for any
of the three preceding years), public school that had three kindergarten classes with
a total of 65 students. Six children were randomly pulled from two of the classes to
receive the PAWS instruction, while the remaining 53 children received typical
writing instruction (i.e., the writing component of Harcourt’s StoryTown reading/
language arts program). Again, several children missed at least one task during the
assessment periods. For most tasks, there was a greater attrition rate for control
participants than for the PAWS participants (e.g., 17 vs. 30 %) except for the essay
task; the attrition rate for the PAWS participants (50 %) was greater than the
attrition rate for the control participants (36 %). These greater attrition rates, in
comparison to school 1, likely reflect the low performing versus high performing
differences between the two contexts. However, it is also likely that students were
simply absent on the day when the essay task was administered.
PAWS intervention
PAWS incorporated several important features of peer-assisted tutoring. First, it
involved pairing students to work together as partners. To create the pairs, children
were first ranked based on their DIBELS letter naming fluency scores. Then, the
class was divided in half, and the children at the top of each list were paired
together. Finally, teachers reviewed the list to ensure that there were no potential
Table 1 Participant demographic information by condition and school
PAWS group Controls
School 1 School 2 School 1 School 2
n 12 10 27 37
M age (in months) 67.0 67.3 68.8 68.4
SD age (in months) 3.3 3.6 4.0 3.6
% female 42 % 52 % 60 % 35 %
Ethnicity
African American 33 % 30 % 80 % 78 %
Asian 0 % 4 % 0 % 0 %
Caucasian 58 % 56 % 10 % 14 %
Hispanic 0 % 0 % 10 % 5 %
Other 8 % 11 % 0 % 3 %
Attrition rates
Alphabet writing fluency 0 % 17 % 11 % 30 %
Spelling 0 % 17 % 11 % 30 %
Sentence writing 0 % 17 % 4 % 32 %
Essay 0 % 50 % 7 % 36 %
School 1 had two classes participating; School 2 had three classes participating
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personality conflicts. Second, students were trained to use specific prompts,
corrections, and feedback. Instructors used a set of brief scripted lessons to train all
students. Third, roles were reciprocal; students switched roles and took turns being
coaches & writers. Fourth, students were provided highly structured content
material (see description of activities below) and trained to use them independently.
Finally, there was active engagement in frequent writing.
The PAWS curriculum combined the need to focus early writing instruction on
critical transcription skills with an effective learning pedagogy (i.e., peer-assisted
learning). This instruction targeted both writing letters and spelling. Earlier lessons
that targeted writing letters focused on formation and fluency, and later lessons that
targeted spelling focused on teaching encoding using decodable words and spelling
using sight words. Each lesson involved completing one activity (e.g., Letter
Learning, What Comes After/Before?, Missing Letters, Cover-Copy-Check). In
addition to the main lessons, students completed weekly reviews of the prior
lessons, and when time permitted, they spent the remainder of the lesson on
supplemental activities that focused on letter formation, letter fluency, and spelling.
In the Letter Learning lessons, students were introduced to the name, sound, and
formation of three letters. Then students practiced writing each letter three times.
This practice not only included scaffolding for earlier attempts, but students also
received peer feedback after each attempt. Students were trained to provide specific
feedback to their partner about the shape, size, and placement of each letter. During
these lessons, students learned 18 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. The sequence of
letters was closely aligned to the reading curriculum across the participating
schools.
Students worked on their letter writing fluency during the What Comes After/
Before? lessons. First, students were given a letter that came before one of the
week’s target letters, and they were instructed to write what letter comes after the
letter. Then, students were given a letter that came after each of the week’s target
letters, and they needed to write what letter comes before the letter. After each
attempt, the student received feedback from their coach about the correctness of
their response. In order to provide specific feedback, students were trained to use
alphabet checkers to determine whether their partner wrote the correct letter.
In the Missing Letters lessons, students practiced spelling decodable words.
Students completed several words that were missing a letter. Letters were
strategically removed from CVC words to help students focus on different sounds
of the word (i.e., initial, final, middle). The final word on the worksheet was blank,
allowing students to practice spelling the whole word for themselves. For each
word, students wrote the missing letter(s). After each attempt, students received peer
feedback about the correctness of their response. As coaches, students were trained
to first listen for the initial sound, then listen for the final sound, and lastly listen for
the middle vowel sound. Instructors provided additional support for coaches to
check whether their partner wrote the correct letter.
Finally, in the Cover-Copy-Check lessons, students practiced writing sight words.
Students were introduced to two sight words per lesson. With their partner, students
‘took a mental picture of the word’. Then the coach would cover the word while the
student tried to write the word from memory. For the second attempt, coaches would
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 31
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count to five after covering the target word so that there was a longer delay between
the writer seeing the word and writing the word. After each attempt, the student
would receive feedback from the coach on the correctness of their attempt. Students
were trained to compare the writer’s attempt with the model provided.
Procedures and design
The PAWS instruction was provided in the spring of the school year by two project
staff. Students were pulled from their language arts instruction three times a week
for 30 min each session. The first staff member taught the PAWS participants from
school 1. She was a master’s student in Special Education with experience teaching
students with disabilities. She completed 35 sessions—20 sessions focused on
letters and 15 sessions focused on spelling. Students were taught 18 letters and nine
high frequency words (i.e., is, of, and, to, in, you, it, he, she). The second staff
member taught the PAWS participants from school 2. She was a doctoral student in
Special Education with experience teaching kindergarten and first grade special
education. Because school 2 started 3 weeks later and ended 2 weeks earlier than
school 1, she only completed 23 sessions that focused primarily on 12 letters and
two high frequency words (i.e., you, here).
Both staff members received training on the PAWS lessons. Prior to beginning
training, both staff member had read the K-PALS and the PAWS manual. Next, they
engaged in role-playing for each activity in the PAWS program. The staff members
took turns being students and teacher until all questions were answered and they felt
comfortable with the program. For the first four PAWS lessons delivered, the staff
members were accompanied by the first author, who was present to ensure fidelity
and provide support as needed.
Project staff met weekly for discussions with senior members of the research
team. During meetings, there were discussions about the feasibility, including
usability, of the lessons and about students’ engagement. As in any research project,
there were also conversations about challenges to implementation. Because fidelity
of the intervention is one of the outcome variables supporting our first aim (i.e.,
demonstrate feasibility), specific details will be discussed in a later section.
Measures
Prior to and after the instruction period, all participants completed a battery of
curriculum-based writing measures (CBM-W) that were administered to the whole
class, including an alphabet fluency task, a spelling task, a sentence-writing task,
and an essay task. All writing measures were exhaustively, double-coded with high
reliability (i.e., percent agreement ranged from 82 to 90 %).
Alphabet writing fluency
To measure alphabet writing fluency, children were asked to print the entire
lowercase alphabet in manuscript as quickly and as accurately as possible in 1 min.
This handwriting automaticity task has been widely used by writing researchers
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(e.g., Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, & Whitaker, 1997; Hudson, Lane, &
Mercer, 2005; Jones & Christensen, 1999). One point was awarded for each
correctly written letter. Partial credit (i.e., � point) was awarded to letters that were
uppercase, reversed, or recognizable but contained formation or control errors. The
alphabet writing fluency score was the number of points earned in 1 min.
Spelling
A researcher-generated task was used to examine spelling. The task involved
spelling five CVC words with each of the vowels represented, two grade-appropriate
sight words, and three CVC nonsense words. The words were scored using a 9-point
phonological, rating scale that was adapted from Tangel and Blachman’s (1992)
scoring procedure (see Appendix for coding rules and examples). To account for the
developmental level of the kindergarten students, students also received credit for
demonstrating prewriting skills. For example, a child would get one point for
producing a scribble and two points for producing a single good form or writing that
demonstrated knowledge of writing features such as linearity and discreteness. The
spelling score was the number of points earned on the task.
Sentence-writing
To measure students’ ability to write sentences, students were given picture-prompts
and asked to write a sentence describing the picture. They had 3 min to complete as
many sentences as possible. Coker and Ritchey (2010) used a similar task to assess
sentence writing in kindergarten and first grade children and reported good reliability
and validity. The sentences were coded for the number of correct word sequences
(CWS).ACWSwas two adjacentwords thatwere correctly spelled and grammatically
(e.g., capitalized and punctuated) and semantically acceptable within the context of
the sentence. This measure has been widely used in previous studies (e.g., Coker &
Ritchey, 2010;McMaster, Du,&Petursdottir, 2009)with good reliability and validity.
The sentence-writing score was the number of CWS written in 3 min.
Essay
Finally, students’ ability to write longer texts was assessed with an essay task used
in previous studies (e.g., Puranik & Al Otaiba, 2012). Participants were instructed to
write an essay that completes the prompt ‘‘I like kindergarten because…’’ After
introducing the task, the assessor helped the students brainstorm ideas. Then the
students had 5 min to complete their essay. The essays were also coded for the
number of CWS. The essay score was the number of CWS written in 5 min.
Letter naming fluency (LNF)
The LNF task assessed students’ ability to name letters. Students had 1 min to name
randomly presented uppercase and lowercase letters. The LNF score was the
number of correctly named letters.
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 33
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Phonemic segmentation fluency (PSF)
The PSF task assessed students’ ability to segment three- and four-phoneme words
into their individual phonemes. Students had 1 min to produce the individual
phonemes for each word presented verbally by the assessor. The PSF score was the
number of correctly produced phonemes.
Nonsense word fluency (NWF)
The NWF task assessed students’ ability to read nonsense words. Students had 1 min to
either produce thewhole nonsenseword or produce the individual letter sounds for each
VCandCVCnonsenseword.Two scores resulted from theNWF task. The correct letter
sounds (NWF-CLS) score was the number of correctly produced letter sounds that were
either read in isolation or as part of thewholeword. Thewholewords read (NWF-WWR)
score was the number of whole nonsense words read correctly the first time.
Questionnaire
To address the social validity of PAWS and levels of satisfaction with the program,
we administered a simple 4-item questionnaire to the students at the end of the
PAWS program. The instructor read a scripted introduction and provided instruction
to ensure student understanding. The four items were read aloud to the students and
they were required to respond with a yes, no, and sometimes. Emoticons for each
response was included to help students.
Fidelity of instruction
All of the instruction sessionswere videotaped, and a sample of34 lessonswas randomly
selected for fidelity purposes—one lesson per week for each instructor. Two research
assistantswith experience teaching elementary students coded the fidelity of instruction.
The fidelity measure comprised five general observations (e.g., Does the interventionist
exhibit enthusiasm and warmth? Does the interventionist ensure understanding?) and
nine observations specific to the intervention (e.g., Does the interventionist follow the
script? Does the interventionist ensure that the writer and coach are working together?).
These fourteen observationswere coded on a three-point scalewith 1 indicating never, 2
indicating sometimes, and 3 indicating most of the time. The fidelity score is the
proportion of the total possible points (i.e., sum of points earned divided by 42 possible
points). Fidelity was measured with high inter-rater reliability (ICC = 0.92).
Analysis
Qualitative and quantitative data analyses were used to address three aims. Our first
research aim was to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing the PAWS intervention.
We considered three aspects of feasibility. First, we reported the level of fidelity with
which the instructors provided the instruction. Second, we described how the dosage
varied across the two schools. Third, we demonstrated the usability by summarizing
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123
students’ responses regarding their engagement and enjoyment with the PAWS
intervention.
Our second research aim was to learn about the promise of PAWS for improving
kindergartners’ writing performance. Descriptive statistics for pre- and post-test
writing measures are included in Table 2 (in Table 3 descriptive statistics are
separated by school). Since there were fewer PAWS participants than control
participants, the Welch statistic was used to determine if there were differences
between the groups at pretest; there were no significant differences. Each measure at
posttest was analyzed using an ANCOVA comparing PAWS participants to control
participants with the measure at pretest as a covariate. Similar analysis was used to
address our third aim of examining improvement on reading-related measures.
Results
Feasibility of PAWS
Fidelity
The staff members provided the instruction with high fidelity. The fidelity ratings
for Instructor 1 ranged from 91 to 100 % (M = 98 %, SD = 3 %). The fidelity
Table 2 Descriptive statistics for pre- and post-test CBM-W and CBM-R by group
Measure PAWS group Controls
n M SD Range n M SD Range
Pretest
Alphabet writing fluency 22 4.5 3.7 0–13 62 3.7 4.3 0–23.5
Spelling 22 59.7 14.7 20–89 62 52.8 17.4 20–89
Sentence writing 22 1.0 2.0 0–8 63 1.24 3.3 0–19
Essay 18 0.8 1.7 0–5 60 1.2 4.4 0–30
LNF 24 32.4 19.1 1–66 33 24.3 14.7 5–56
PSF 24 14.3 11.2 0–42 33 12.5 10.1 0–36
NWF-CLS 24 13.5 10.9 1–45 33 9.3 9.6 0–41
NWF-WWR 24 0.7 2.0 0–9 33 0.6 2.0 0–10
Posttest
Alphabet writing fluency 22 13.7 7.4 4.5–25.5 62 9.3 6.2 0–23
Spelling 22 81.1 12.4 39–90 62 72.0 18.7 11–89
Sentence writing 22 7.6 5.4 0–20 63 5.9 5.7 0–23
Essay 18 8.4 8.9 0–32 60 4.1 5.1 0–18
LNF 24 53.0 16.1 13–78 19 49.1 11.8 28–67
PSF 24 44.2 15.6 4–63 19 41.6 18.3 4–66
NWF-CLS 24 33.3 21.2 3–84 19 26.0 10.2 16–47
NWF-WWR 24 5.2 7.8 0–28 19 1.5 2.1 0–7
LNF Letter naming fluency, PSF phonemic segmentation sluency, NWF-CLS nonsense word fluency-
correct letter sounds, NWF-WWR nonsense word fluency-whole words read
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 35
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Table
3Descriptivestatistics
forpre-andpost-testCBM-W
andCBM-R
byschool
Measure
PAWSgroup
Controls
School1
School2
School1
School2
nM
SD
Range
nM
SD
Range
nM
SD
Range
nM
SD
Range
Pretest
CBM-W
AWF
12
4.5
1.8
1.5–7.5
10
4.4
5.3
0–13
25
2.8
2.1
0–6.5
37
4.3
5.2
0–23.5
Spelling
12
61.9
7.2
49–74
10
57.0
20.6
20–89
25
56.8
12.1
29–81
37
50.1
19.9
4–89
SW
12
1.1
1.7
0–4
10
0.9
2.5
0–8
27
1.0
2.2
0–8
36
1.4
4.0
0–19
Essay
12
1.3
2.0
0–5
60.0
0.0
0–0
26
0.8
1.9
0–8
34
1.5
5.6
0–30
CBM-R
LNF
12
39.5
16.4
10–66
12
25.3
19.7
1–54
14
28.3
13.2
8–56
19
21.4
15.3
5–49
PSF
12
17.7
11.5
6–42
12
10.8
10.2
0–31
14
17.1
9.5
3–34
19
9.2
9.4
0–36
NWF-CLS
12
16.2
8.2
2–29
12
10.8
12.8
1–45
14
12.2
10.6
1–41
19
7.1
8.5
0–32
NWF-W
WR
12
0.3
0.9
0–3
12
1.1
2.6
0–9
14
0.0
0.0
0–0
19
1.0
2.5
0–10
Posttest
CBM-W
AWF
12
18.0
6.2
7–25.5
10
8.7
5.2
4.5–17.5
25
12.1
6.2
1–23
37
7.4
5.4
0–20
Spelling
12
85.6
3.2
80–90
10
75.7
16.9
39–90
25
77.0
20.9
11–89
37
68.6
16.6
21–89
SW
12
9.9
4.6
6–20
10
4.9
5.2
0–10
27
7.2
4.7
0–19
36
4.8
6.1
0–23
Essay
12
11.3
9.3
0–32
62.7
4.2
0–9
26
5.5
5.4
0–18
34
2.9
4.6
0–15
CBM-R
LNF
12
57.6
13.4
40–78
12
48.4
17.9
13–70
14
49.6
12.2
28–67
547.6
11.6
35–65
PSF
12
53.9
8.0
37–63
12
34.4
15.3
4–51
14
48.9
11.9
17–66
521.2
18.6
4–48
NWF-CLS
12
38.4
20.1
17–80
12
28.2
21.8
3–84
14
27.3
11.3
16–47
522.4
5.7
18–32
36 C. S. Puranik et al.
123
Table
3continued
Measure
PAWSgroup
Controls
School1
School2
School1
School2
nM
SD
Range
nM
SD
Range
nM
SD
Range
nM
SD
Range
NWF-W
WR
12
5.5
7.8
0–22
12
4.9
8.1
0–28
14
1.9
2.2
0–7
50.4
0.9
0–2
School1isahighperform
ingschoolwithtwoclasses;School2isalow
perform
ingschoolwiththreeclasses;AWFalphabet
writingfluency;SW
sentence
writing,LNF
letter
nam
ingfluency,PSFphonem
icsegmentationfluency,NWF-CLSnonsense
word
fluency-Correctletter
sounds,NWF-W
WRnonsense
word
fluency-w
holewordsread
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 37
123
ratings for Instructor 2 ranged from 75 to 100 % (M = 97 %, SD = 7 %). In the
lesson with the lowest fidelity, Instructor 2 was introducing the spelling task for the
first time. Many of the students struggled with this new task. As indicated by the
instructor, several students were more distracted than usual, and one child had an
unusually difficult time when learning the sight words. With the exception of that
one lesson, all other lessons were completed with high fidelity (i.e., 96 % or above).
Dosage
The dosage of PAWS varied across the two schools. As mentioned previously, given
different start and end dates, the two schools differed in how many lessons were
completed: school 1 completed 35 lesson and school 2 completed 23 lessons. Both
schools completed approximately the same number of lessons that focused on
writing lowercase letters (i.e., 20 lessons). However, the students in school 1 learned
six more letters than the students in school 2. This difference resulted from School 2
getting a later start and the slower pace needed in the low performing school. School
1 also spent more time on spelling—that is, school 1 completed 15 lessons
compared to only one and a half lessons at school 2.
It was feasible to provide approximately three sessions per week in both schools.
Lessons were allotted 30 min, and both instructors limited their instruction time to
approximately 30 min. On average, lessons in school 1 lasted 29 min (SD = 2.4).
The shortest lesson was 23 min, and the longest lesson was 34 min. Similarly,
lessons in school 2 lasted 33 min (SD = 4.6). For school 2, the shortest lesson was
24 min, and the longest lesson was 40 min.
Despite lessons being approximately the same length, some adjustments to the
lessons were necessary to meet the level of students in school 2. While attempting
the fluency tasks, students struggled with using the alphabet checker. Most students
did not even know whether a given letter would appear in the beginning, middle, or
end of the alphabet. Therefore, alternative activities or downward extensions to
provide greater scaffolding were developed. For example, in the Letter Matching
lesson, students first practiced writing the target letters, and then they connected that
letter to the corresponding letter on the alphabet chart located above writing practice
area.
Even with these adaptations, the pace needed to be slower for school 2. For each
set of target letters, four lessons were required to cover the material at school 2
compared to three lessons at school 1. Moreover, all of the specific feedback lessons
needed to be repeated at school 2, which extended the four lessons to eight lessons.
These adjustments limited the amount of material that was able to be covered at the
low performing school.
Usability
In this study, we defined usability as the level of engagement and enjoyment as
reported by the instructors and students. Both instructors reported that students were
engaged and enjoyed PAWS. They also reported that the PAWS components
functioned as intended.
38 C. S. Puranik et al.
123
In general, the students responded positively to PAWS and working with a
partner. One student did not complete the end-of-year questionnaire. Sixteen of the
remaining 21 PAWS participants responded ‘‘yes’’ to the statement ‘‘I liked the
activities I played in PAWS!’’, and four students responded ‘‘sometimes’’. Only one
student responded ‘‘no’’, and when asked what was liked least about PAWS, she
said ‘‘Pencils. I wanted markers’’. Nineteen of the 21 PAWS participants responded
‘‘yes’’ to the statement ‘‘I liked working with a classmate!’’, and one student
responded ‘‘sometimes’’. Again, only one student responded ‘‘no’’.
Effectiveness of PAWS-writing
Overall, PAWS participants outperformed the control participants on the alphabet
fluency and essay writing task, and there were no significant differences between the
conditions on the reading measures (see Fig. 1). Similar patterns were found when
ANCOVAs were conducted split by school, but the sample size was not large
enough to detect statistically significant differences. As an indicator of effect size,
Cohen’s d (i.e., mean difference divided by average standard deviation; Cohen,
1977) was provided for all posttest analyses. More detailed findings for each
measure follow.
Alphabet writing fluency
At pretest, participants correctly wrote an average of 3.9 letters (SD = 4.1) in 60 s
(range 0–23.5). There was not a significant difference between PAWS participants
and control participants, Welch’s F(1, 42.35)\ 1, p = 0.41. At posttest, partici-
pants correctly wrote an average of 10.5 letters (SD = 6.7) in 60 s (range 0–25.5).
The PAWS participants wrote significantly more letters than the control partici-
pants, F(1, 81) = 7.03, p = 0.01, d = 0.68 (see Fig. 1a).
To illustrate the differential growth on the alphabet writing fluency task, we
selected two students from the same class who performed equally at pretest (see
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
Alphabet Fluency
Scor
e (o
ut o
f 26)
PAWS
Controls
d = 0.68*
0
20
40
60
80
100
Spelling
Scor
e (o
ut o
f 100
)
d = 0.53
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Sentence Writing Essay
Num
ber
of C
WS
d = 0.32
d = 0.71* A B C D
Fig. 1 Comparison of PAWS and control participants’ performance at posttest on CBM-W. *p\ 0.01
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 39
123
Fig. 2). The students were approximately the same age (PAWS = 69 months;
control = 68 months), and they were both Caucasian. The PAWS participant was
female, and the control participant was male. At the beginning of kindergarten, both
students were able to write several letters, some of the letters were formed correctly
and some of the letters had formation issues. By the end of kindergarten, the PAWS
participant was able to write all of the letters of the alphabet within 60 s, and most
of the letters were formed correctly. The control participant did not show much
improvement—he was still only able to write several letters and seemed to get
confused with the order and shape of the letters after the letter f.
Spelling
At pretest, participants scored an average of 54.6 points (SD = 16.9) on the spelling
test (range 4–89). There was not a statistically significant difference between PAWS
participants and control participants, Welch’s F(1, 43.35) = 3.26, p = 0.08. At
posttest, participants scored an average of 74.4 points (SD = 17.7) on the spelling
test (range 21–90). There was not a statistically significant difference between the
groups, F(1, 81) = 1.83, p = 0.18, d = 0.53 (see Fig. 1b).
Sentence-writing
At pretest, participants correctly wrote an average of 1.2 correct word sequences
(SD = 3.0) in 3 min (range 0–19). There was not a significant difference between
PAWS participants and control participants, Welch’s F(1, 60.39)\ 1, p = 0.70. At
posttest, participants wrote an average of 6.3 correct word sequences (SD = 5.6) in
3 min (range 0–23). Again, there was not a statistically significant difference
between the groups, F(1, 82) = 2.86, p = 0.10, d = 0.32 (see Fig. 1c).
Essay
At pretest, participants correctly wrote an average of 1.1 correct word sequences
(SD = 3.9) in 5 min (range 0–30). There was not a significant difference between
PAWS participants and control participants, Welch’s F(1, 71.17)\ 1, p = 0.60. At
PAWS Control
pretest
posttest
Fig. 2 Example of alphabet fluency task at pretest and posttest for a PAWS participant and a controlparticipant
40 C. S. Puranik et al.
123
posttest, participants wrote an average of 5.1 correct word sequences (SD = 6.4) in
5 min (range 0–32). The PAWS participants wrote significantly more CWS than the
control participants, F(1, 75) = 7.46, p = 0.01, d = 0.71 (see Fig. 1d).
Again, to illustrate the differential growth on the essay task between a PAWS
participant and a control participant, two students from the same class who
performed equally at pretest were selected (see Fig. 3). The students were the same
age (63 months), and they were both African American males. At the beginning of
kindergarten, both students filled the page with random letters, which represented a
text that they dictated to the assessors. By the end of kindergarten both students
were able to represent complete thoughts about why they like kindergarten using
full sentences and some correctly spelled words. The PAWS participant was able to
write significantly more text than the control participant, which extended onto a
second page (not shown in example).
Effectiveness of PAWS-reading
Letter naming fluency
At pretest, participants correctly named an average of 27.7 letters (SD = 17.0) in
1 min on the LNF task (range 1–66). There were no significant differences between
PAWS participants and control participants, Welch’s F(1, 41.4) = 2.99, p = 0.09.
At posttest, participants named an average of 51.3 letters (SD = 14.3) in 1 min
lortnoCSWAP
pretest
posttest
Fig. 3 Examples of essay task at pretest and posttest for a PAWS participant and a control participant
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 41
123
(range 13–78). There was not a statistically significant difference between the
groups, F(1, 40)\ 1, p = 0.82, d = 0.27.
Phonemic segmentation fluency
On the PSF task, participants correctly produced an average of 13.3 phonemes
(SD = 10.5) in 1 min at pre-test (range 0–42). The difference between PAWS
participants and control participants was not statistically significant, Welch’s F(1,
46.7)\ 1, p = 0.55. At posttest, participants produced an average of 43.0
phonemes (SD = 16.7) in 1 min (range 4–66). There was not a statistically
significant difference between the groups, F(1, 40)\ 1, p = 0.58, d = 0.15.
Nonsense word fluency
At pretest, participants correctly produced an average of 11.1 letter sounds
(SD = 10.3) in 1 min in the NWF-CLS task (range 0–45). There was not a
significant difference between PAWS participants and control participants, Welch’s
F(1, 46.0) = 2.31, p = 0.14. At posttest, participants produced an average of 30.1
letter sounds (SD = 17.4) in 1 min (range 3–84). There was not a statistically
significant difference between the groups, F(1, 40)\ 1, p = 0.34, d = 0.42.
Finally, on the NWF-WWR task, participants correctly read an average of 0.63
nonsense words (SD = 1.95) in 1 min at pre-test (range 0–10). There was not a
significant difference between PAWS participants and control participants, Welch’s
F(1, 49.8)\ 1, p = 0.80. At posttest, participants read an average of 3.6 nonsense
words (SD = 6.2) in 1 min (range 0–28). There was not a statistically significant
difference between the groups, F(1, 40) = 1.68, p = 0.20, d = 0.62.
Discussion
There is consensus among researchers that getting an early start in reading leads to
future success in reading. Similarly, future success in writing depends upon early
educational experiences. Despite the importance of early instruction, research on
writing with young, beginning writers in kindergarten is sparse. In light of the
relatively new CCSS, there is greater need for children to receive empirical based
instruction to learn the fundamentals of beginning writing. The goal of this study
was to examine the feasibility and promise of using a peer-assisted strategies
framework to teach writing to kindergarten children in two schools which served
similarly low-SES students, but one school was high-performing and one was low-
performing. This project was supported through funding from the Institute of
Education Sciences Goal 2 Research to develop and pilot a new program to teach
early writing skills. Three research questions were addressed in the present study.
The first question focused on the overall feasibility of implementing the planned
components with kindergarteners (i.e., fidelity, dosage, and usability). The second
question was to determine whether the PAWS intervention would demonstrate
promise for increasing writing performance (i.e., alphabet fluency, spelling,
42 C. S. Puranik et al.
123
sentence-writing, and essay-writing) for kindergarten children and the third question
was to examine whether the PAWS intervention would increase beginning reading
performance (letter-naming, phoneme segmentation, nonsense word reading, and
letter-sound naming).
Evidence of feasibility: fidelity, dosage, and usability
In the first year, PAWS was delivered in a small group format of six children (3
pairs) by research staff. The staff members who served as teachers reported that the
lessons were generally feasible to implement within the time frame and that the
PAWS components functioned as intended. The issue of instructor fidelity was
confirmed by video observations. As with any feasibility study, there were lessons
that needed tweaking–this included the teacher instructions, student materials, and
number and type of activities. The staff members provided the instruction with a
high degree of fidelity suggesting that PAWS can be implemented effectively as
intended at least in a small group setting.
As far as dosage is concerned, two issues became important. One, how many
sessions would be required? Would the number of sessions vary depending on the
type of school and students? On the one hand, in the higher performing school, it
was clear that 35 sessions (in School 1) were not adequate to address writing beyond
the sub-word and word level. Clearly it is important to address writing beyond the
word level to be compliant not only with Common Core Standards but also research
indicating the importance of fluency at various language levels (e.g., Whitaker et al.,
1994). We have addressed this issue in our studies in year 1 and 2. Regarding the
issue of the number of sessions varying by the type of school, the answer was an
obvious yes. The lower performing school (School 2) required more repetition of
lessons and more scaffolding to get through some of the lessons. As mentioned
previously, for each set of target letters, four lessons were required to cover the
material at school 2 compared to three lessons at school 1. Moreover, all of the
specific feedback lessons needed to be repeated at school 2, which extended the four
lessons to eight lessons which resulted in less material being covered at the low
performing school.
In terms of usability, a positive outcome for PAWS was that the students enjoyed
it. This enjoyment was expressed during the instruction and also noted on feedback
obtained from the students at the end of the instruction. Motivation and enjoyment
are important factors in writing (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Hayes, 1996; Hayes &
Berninger, 2009) and should be considered important ingredients of any instruc-
tional program.
However, we learned in conducting this pilot study, that teaching students to
coach each other in writing is so much more difficult than teaching reading. In
K-PALS (Fuchs et al., 2001a), during the decoding lessons, the coach points to a
letter and says, ‘‘what sound?’’ and the reader provides the answer. If the reader
does not know the answer, the coach helps by saying the sound. The script is simple.
In writing however, giving feedback is not so simple or straightforward. For
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 43
123
example in the Letter Learning task, the writer writes a letter. However, there could
be several errors—it could be the wrong letter, or it could be the right letter but
written incorrectly (e.g., too high or too low on the lines, the wrong size, uppercase
instead of a lower case). Addressing this complexity required more nuanced
feedback on the coach’s part. Therefore, extra time had to be spent teaching the
students how to provide feedback. Another observation was that because writing can
vary so much from student to student, feedback can vary accordingly as well. We
had to train students on how to be nice to their partners or how to be less nit-picky as
sometimes, partners disagreed as to what was ‘‘good enough.’’ A final observation
was that in K-PALS the focus is on practicing as much as possible in the allotted
time—reading as many sounds in the decoding lessons or reading as many words in
the sight word lessons. This is possible because the responses are verbal. By
contrast, writing takes time and so less could be done in a single PAWS lesson
compared to a K-PALS lesson.
Evidence on the effectiveness of PAWS in improving writing and reading-related skills
Our instruction in Year 1, focused on transcription skills (i.e., letter writing, letter
writing fluency, and spelling) mainly because instruction was carried out over
16 weeks in one school and 8 weeks in the second school. This short time-frame
meant that very little time was available to address writing beyond the letter and
word level, such as sentence writing. However, it is important to note that although
we only addressed primarily transcription skills, transfer was noted to text
generation at least as evidenced on the essay writing measure. In school 2, the
abbreviated time resulted in very little word learning—only two sight words were
introduced in the last three lessons. In Year 2 of this project, the duration of the
instruction will be extended to allow us to include sentence level instruction.
Results indicate that there were statistically significant differences between the
PAWS participants and the control children on the alphabet writing fluency and
essay post-test measures with large effect sizes (d = 0.68 and 0.71 respectively).
The non-significant differences for the spelling and sentence writing measures likely
resulted from the underpowered nature of this study. However the effect sizes
indicate practical and meaningful differences in favor of the PAWS intervention
(i.e., for spelling, d = 0.53; for sentence writing, d = 0.32). Our results are similar
to the results of Alves et al. (2015) who reported statistically nonsignificant findings
for their spelling intervention with second graders but with meaningful effect sizes
on the length and the quality of the text produced by the participants in their
experimental condition compared to the control participants (d = 0.63 and
d = 0.53 respectively).
Furthermore, teaching writing appeared to have improved children’s reading-
related skills. These findings appear similar to the few studies that have
concentrated on teaching spelling to primarily improve word reading skills but
also noted improvements in phonemic segmentation (Ehri & Wilce, 1987),
44 C. S. Puranik et al.
123
phonological awareness (Ouellette & Senechal, 2008) and nonsense word reading
(O’Connor & Jenkins, 1995; Vandervelden & Siegel, 1997). Although improving
reading-related skills was not the primary focus of this study, it was very
encouraging to note that the PAWS participants performed as well as the control
participants on the DIBELS measures, with effect sizes ranging from 0.27 for LNF
and 0.62 for NWF to 0.15 for PSF. In one of our participating schools, the principal
and teacher were very concerned that the students would fall back on their reading,
because they were being pulled out for PAWS during their Language Arts
Instruction time. However, our findings indicate that there was no need for concern.
The results of our findings thus provide further evidence that teaching writing
appears to be effective in improving not only writing but also had a positive, albeit
not significant effect on beginning reading skills (Graham & Hebert, 2010).
Current educational efforts have concentrated on reading, but as the nation’s
report card indicates, these efforts are far from enough. It is troubling that as few as
30 % of 8th graders demonstrated proficient writing (National Center for
Educational Statistics, 2012). Writing is an integral component of language and
literacy, and writing instruction should be part of a comprehensive literacy program
because the abilities to read and write are both important for academic success.
There are other reasons to include writing instruction as part of a comprehensive
early literacy program. For instance, research shows that practicing spelling a word
through writing reinforces phonemic awareness and word reading (e.g., Craig, 2006)
and letter writing impacts learning letter names and perhaps letter sounds (Puranik,
Lonigan, & Kim, 2011). In summary, although no causal inferences can be made at
this point, preliminary evidence indicates that PAWS was feasible and that it
appears to show promise for improving writing in kindergarten children at least
when delivered in a small group format.
Limitations and future directions
Although preliminary results for PAWS look promising, there are several
limitations to this study that need to be acknowledged and which we will be
addressing in future iterations. The primary limitation is that the children in our
study received the instruction in small groups, whereas the control children received
instruction in a whole class format. It is entirely possible that the differences in
instructional format are responsible for the differences in performance. In our
follow-up study, we have addressed this issue by providing the PAWS instruction in
a whole group format. The small group setting format used in this study could be
beneficial for working with children who struggle with writing and who need more
individualized instruction (i.e., Tier 2).
A second limitation of this study was the relatively small sample and setting,
which restrict the generalizability of our findings. Small sample sizes also reduce
statistical power to detect significant finding which may help explain the
discrepancies between the non-significant p values and effect sizes on our CBM-
W and CBM-R measures (Sun, Pan, & Wang, 2010 as cited in Alves et al., 2015)
and increase the likelihood of Type II errors (Abraham & Russell, 2008). Our follow
up studies have been conducted with larger samples to circumvent this problem.
Using peer assisted strategies to teach early writing:… 45
123
Perhaps another limitation of this study was our high attrition rates—especially
among the students at school 2 (i.e., the low performing school). Note, these
attrition rates do not reflect the number of instruction sessions attended; they reflect
the number of children that missed out on the pre-test assessments mainly because
the students were absent on the assessment days. In our subsequent studies, we have
made every effort to make up these missed assessments. On a final note, PAWS
instruction was provided by trained research staff and future research will determine
whether the effects are similar when PAWS is conducted by classroom teachers,
who are our intended end-user.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using a peer-assisted strategies framework to teach writing to young
beginning writers appears promising. However, we also recognize the need to
temper our results with caution given the pilot-study nature of the research, the
small sample size, the small group format, and the study’s quasi-experimental
design. Yet, the results from Year 1 of this project serve as an important starting
point. Efforts in our lab are underway to address some of the limitations from the
pilot-study such as extending instructional time, comparing the effectiveness of
PAWS in a whole classroom format, and including a more diverse and larger sample
size. Future studies are needed to validate our preliminary results and refine the
instruction to address writing skills at different language levels beyond the word
level.
Acknowledgments Support for carrying out this research was provided in part by Grant R305A120368
from the Institute of Education Sciences. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not
represent views of the funding agencies. We are very grateful to the teachers, students and their parents
for participating in this research project. Special thanks to Megan Paterra, Mary Sears, Emily Sobeck, and
Kaylee Wynkoop for their help with this project.
Appendix
See Table 4.
46 C. S. Puranik et al.
123
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Table 4 Spelling coding rules
Points Rule Response (example of ‘rib’)
0 No response
1 Scribble: produced by scratching
2 Single good form: not produced just by scratching,
but in a more controlled manner
3 Conventional letter: at least one real letter not
phonetically related to the target word
4 Random string: more than one, different random
(not phonetically related) letters
5 Early phonetic: at least one letter phonetically
related to the target word in any position of the
word
6 First letter: the initial sound represented by the
correct letter either by itself or with other letters
7 Multiple phonetic: the majority of the sounds
represented (i.e., initial correct letter ? one
phonetically related letter in any position)
8 Invented spelling: all of the sounds represented
(i.e., initial correct letter ? any attempt to
represent the vowel sound with a vowel
letter ? letter phonetically related to the last
sound)
9 Correct spelling: the word was written in its
conventional form (i.e., correct letters in correct
positions)
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